Decarbonisation of energy systems of South Asian developing economies through regional collaborations

Despite the collective increase in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, several nations have targeted emissions-intensive electricity generation into the foreseeable future due to various constraints. We developed a regional energy collaboration modelling methodology to evaluate a country’s feasibility of decarbonising the electricity generation sector through energy import and export. We selected Bangladesh as a case study for the model to evaluate its decarbonisation potential feasibility with neighbouring South Asian countries of Nepal and Bhutan to analyse the planned future direction of the electricity generation and their and neighbour country’s renewable potential. We showed, in Bangladesh’s case, 100% planned coal and oil-based, and 90% of all fossil fuel-based generation capacity could be replaced with electricity import from Nepal and Bhutan by 2050. The energy collaboration would reduce 66-83% projected total GHG emissions for Bangladesh, which otherwise may rise to around 508 MtCO2e by 2050 from 82 MtCO2e in 2015. The proposed methodology can be used to investigate other region’s decarbonisation feasibility through energy collaboration.